The Big Smoke

When it comes to new technology, I am an embarrassingly late adopter. If I was a prehistoric man, I'd still be soldiering on with square wheels long after the family in the cave next door had switched to the circular variety. But when it comes to Twitter, even I can see the benefits of this terrific, and endearingly personal, networking tool. I can get the latest news from my favourite museums and galleries, follow the best London bloggers, keep track of Mayor's Question Time, or converse with the diplodocus at the Natural History Museum or Dr Samuel Johnson. What's not to like?

Many of my friends and colleagues, who will happily upload their personal details to Facebook or MySpace, still don't get it, though. 'What can you say in 140 characters?' they ask, inadvertently betraying their own lack of imagination in the process. One fellow Time Outer was recently so tickled by a story mocking Twitter in the Onion that they sent me the link – via Facebook, the irony of which appeared to completely escape them.

All of which is a very long-winded way of saying that some enterprising cabbies have now found another great use for Twitter. Tweet a London Cab is a service that allows you to do just that. Thirty London black cab drivers – including occasional Big Smoke contributor and blogger Richard Cudlip – are involved in this new method of hailing cab that has one chief benefit over the existing phone-based pre-book service: there is no central control, all cabbies have access to the account and can allocate calls accordingly, cutting out the need – and cost – of the middle man and providing that all-important personal touch. Follow @tweetalondoncab if you are interested.

Oh, and if you'd been following me on Twitter (@timeoutbigsmoke) you'd have found out about this story when I first tweeted it on Friday.

Along with a set of golf clubs and a dartboard with Field Marshal Montgomery's face on, a monster trawl of Associated Press newsreels from the 1960s and '70s has been discovered in a bunker used by Eisenhower as his WWII headquarters. You can find it just down the road from us on Tottenham Court Road - it's called the Eisenhower Centre. It's one of the eight deep-level tube shelters built during World War II – Big Smoke editor Peter Watts saw inside one of them at Chancery Lane last year.

The haul was unveiled last night at BAFTA in Piccadilly, and it's a real (reel?) treasure trove. The 3,500 hours of ace footage include waterskiing in 1973's top tourist destination of Beirut, Education Minister Margaret Thatcher campaigning for a Yes vote on Europe in an EEC jumper, and Saddam Hussein being shown round a French nuclear facility. Those French, eh?

It'll be made available to researchers, broadcasters and filmmakers, which should freshen up all those hackneyed home-video shows – you know, 'World Leaders Do The Funniest Things' , and so on.

I developed a crush on the bollards of London after watching Ben Hopkins's mindbending experimental London classic 'The Nine Lives Of Tomas Katz' - see the brilliant trailer here - at the ICA, back in the days when I was young and funky (do people still say funky?) enough to watch mindbending experimental London classics at the ICA.

So imagine my delight when I stumbled upon the Bollards of London blog. This site is still in is infancy but has the potential to become THE destination London blog – you could call it canonical – for all things bollardian (see what I did there?). It is the work of John The Cabby, who has a number of other blogs documenting such London ephemera, including the almost-as-essential Front Doors Of London.

I am not the only Londoner with a bollard fetish. See also Brockley Central and Greenwich Phantom and I'm sure there are many others.

I don't think the brilliant Jane's London has got round to bollards yet, but it's only a matter of time.

And if anybody can think of any more bollard-related puns, feel free to leave a comment below.